


Whole

by ArvenaPeredhel



Category: Star Trek: Voyager
Genre: F/M, Flash Fiction, Present Tense, Short, first person POV, rape mention
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-10
Updated: 2017-07-10
Packaged: 2018-11-30 03:58:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 503
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11455491
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ArvenaPeredhel/pseuds/ArvenaPeredhel
Summary: Kathryn muses on her first night with Chakotay





	Whole

The first time we make love, I think I will break beneath his fingertips from sheer joy.

I say "make love" as though this is casual to me, as though my world did not crack and shatter at the foundations simply because when he touched me he was gentle. He won me over at last, pushing through years of reluctance and ancient scars, and when I came to him it was of my own free will. It was intoxicating. There were no bruises now, no clawing scratches over back and shoulders, no bites casting the pale white of my skin into stark relief against innumerable red mouths. I cannot believe it, cannot believe it, cannot believe it. He is slow, and soft, and his calloused hands are careful as they slide over my scars and the lumpy irregularities of badly healed bones, and every moment of it sets my skin on fire. I am in shock, I am laid low, I am torn apart and bare beneath him (above him, beside him) - and this beyond all astounds me, for how could anything be new or novel or pure after all I have done to myself?

He makes me laugh. I have never laughed with my legs spread. Before this night I would not have thought it possible. And in the midst of my rapidly reshaping world I am quickly discovering that there are parts of me even now untouched by the years and the ravages of time. His fingers brush my shoulders, my sides, and I shiver, I giggle, I bloom. What am I now, I wonder? Yesterday I was Vice-Admiral Kathryn Janeway, who had to return to work the next week and face a mountain of reports filed from all across the quadrant. Now I am... I _am_ , simply, embodied and present, no longer shaking, no longer trembling. I was so terrified of this that I kept all dreams of it walled off to suffocate and die away from the sun. And yet here I am, here he is, here we are.

His bed is warm, after, and I am on my side, curled up against him. He sleeps, chest rising and falling beneath my arm, nestled against me as though I am his protector for all his height and imposing shoulders. He does not know it is he who has sheltered me, or that now in the silent watches I admit to myself that the times I have said ' _I love you_ ' were not lies meant to shield my fragile heart from further pain. The years of war against myself and my darker impulses have left me withered and rotten, devoid of hope, devoid of feeling. But he sparked something in me despite all my efforts and my terror, he broke through the walls with tendrils of green and delicate leaves, he found the thing with feathers that not even that horrifyingly final Cardassian knife could butcher.

And here I am. Here he is.

Here we are, as the sun rises.


End file.
